Ingrid Betancourt

Politician and Activist

Ingrid Betancourt Pulecio is a French-Colombian politician and anti-corruption activist. In February 2002 Betancourt was kidnapped by the leftist guerrilla organization Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) while she was campaigning for the presidential elections. She was finally rescued by Colombian security forces six and a half years later, in an operation dubbed Operation Jaque, which also rescued 14 other hostages. Her kidnapping received worldwide coverage, particularly in France, because of her dual French citizenship. In 2010 she wrote a memoir about her time in captivity called "Even Silence Has an End."

During her six years in captivity, the former Colombian presidential candidate learned that those who are stripped of power lash out against those who are equally powerless—just like children in a schoolyard.

In order to respect herself and to keep hold of her sanity, Betancourt refused to follow her guards' orders. When you’re obliged to do things you don’t want to do, your identity is at stake—you can lose yourself,...

Some of Betancourt’s fellow captives were critical of her behavior in their memoir. “I don’t want to judge them because I think we all are entitled to our truth and if they saw me like that, well, the only thing I...

“I realized being in the jungle that what I had thought I could do—changing the way politics were being done in Colombia—was not possible the way I wanted to do it, by confronting, by denouncing,” she says.